If you believe in the adage that "A TV isn't just a TV anymore", then the Samsung 7500 Smart TV series is the one you should be eyeing, and saving up the cash for. It has stunning looks, very good performance, neat set of Smart TV features and the razzle-dazzle of stuff like motion gesture and the new minimalistic remote control.
TV :
Excellent performance
Very thin frame around the screen
Built very well
Minimalistic remote is brilliant
Onscreen UI is retained from the previous-gen
Features:
Smart TV features usually remain criminally underutilized at home
Gesture control may not be deployed on a regular basis
We thought the “number of cores” battle would be limited to laptops and smartphones. Samsung ensured that wasn’t going to be the case. First, they announced last year that the Smart Evolution kit would ensure users could upgrade the 2012 range of dual-core powered Smart TVs to quad-core. Now, the 2013 range of Smart TVs are quad-core from the outset. Does your smartphone or laptop have enough cores to match your TV? Shame if it doesn’t!
Build & Design: The showpiece for your living room
Samsung has been consistently improving the look of their Smart TVs, with every refresh. The F7500 has a very slim bezel around the screen, and almost gives the illusion of an edge-to-edge display. The previous generations’ designs had been giving indications for this, and it finally seems to be working. The silver finish on this frame looks fairly more premium than the piano black or the matte black finish seen on most flat panel televisions.
The F7500’s table top stand has been redesigned as well. It doesn’t have the arc design seen on last year’s TVs, and is lighter as well. The neck of the stand has the Samsung logo imprinted on it, but thankfully, it doesn’t illuminate! Illuminated logos on the front can be very annoying when you are watching TV with the lights turned off.
The F7500’s build quality is exquisite. The brushed aluminum finish on the bezel, chassis, and the stand looks very classy. Immediately, it stands apart from the bunch of TVs that get the black coloured finish. All is not metal though, as the rear half of the chassis is partly some very good quality plastic. The 46-inch television that we are testing here is 34.4mm thick, which basically puts it in the slim category. The sides are flat, despite being very thin. The clean design is very much evident, since there are no physical buttons on the front. On the top side sits the front facing camera, that is used for motion and gesture controls, as well as when you might be using an app like Skype.
In a nutshell, what we get is a very good looking television, which you would be proud to show off in the living room, and could very well become the center piece. Minimalism does go a long way in the world of clean and crisp designs, and Samsung has blended that with good quality materials and excellent build quality to complete the F7500’s package. We really cannot find much wrong with how this TV has been put together, and any fault finding will only tantamount to knit picking.
Features & Specifications: Loaded. Fully Loaded
The F7500 is a fairly-loaded Smart TV from Samsung. Let us look at the very basic connectivity options first. There are 4 HDMI inputs, along with one each of Component and Composite, with one shared between the two. You also get three USB hubs to connect external drives to, for direct media playback. While the TV has Wi-Fi, you also have the option of taking the wired route for the home sharing network. All connectivity options are placed on one side at the back, which will make them easier to access in case you have wall mounted the TV.
The F7500 is a 46-inch LED TV with a Full HD 1080p resolution. Samsung has implemented the Micro Dimming Ultimate feature, which makes certain scenes with major shadow areas look a lot more detailed. The panel is slightly on the reflective side, which means viewing angles are cut down a bit. But, colour shift is not very noticeable for a much larger degree of side viewing.
The most important feature of the Series 7 is the 1.3GHz quad-core processor, up from the dual-core power package from the 2012 series. This is pretty much taking the Smart TVs into a different league, at least when you compare this with the alternatives on the shop floor. But there is a rather valid apprehension – what will you do with a quad core processor in a TV? Well, we really didn’t see much difference in performance or the speed at which basic TV tasks were accomplished. Examples of this include changing sources, navigating the on-screen menu for making setting tweaks or flipping channels. Where the quad core does have an impact is when you are accessing the Smart TV functions and gesture, but that is a fairly limited sphere to have an impact on!
Samsung’s Smart Evolution Kit will enable better hardware on this very TV when you can buy the upgrades sometime down the line. Quad-core to an octa-core processor is an example.
Smart TV features have seen incremental updates over time. This all adds up to a major update, accumulated over time, when compared to the 2011 Smart TV that I own! But, the essence remains pretty much the same, with the focus being on apps. Better apps, more graphic intensive apps, but still apps nevertheless.
